VMworld 2016 – Day 2 workshops and sessions
Sam McGeown
vRealize Automation vExperts Workshop
I attended a workshop with Jad El Zein in Barcelona last year and it was one of the best sessions I attended, especially as it was just on the news of vRA7’s release. This workshop was this year’s equivelant, but because the session included a lot of people just getting started with vRA a lot of the time was taken to explain what vRA does, so there was no real time for the more in depth details on the new features that are coming (some already announced and in Tech Preview). I certainly don’t begrudge the guys just starting the chance to hear the basics from Jad, but I think a more expert session would also be good.
vRealize Automation and NSX Design Experts Panel - #MGT9220
This design panel was hosted by Jad El Zein (I’m not stalking him, I promise) and had Cody De Arkland, Francesco Vigo and Grant Orchard on the panel. I went primarily to hear some more customer views and maybe some of the challenges that they’re facing, to compare with my customers in the UK and the solutions that were proposed. The session didn’t disappoint, with Cody taking the lions share of questions - as a customer he had a unique insight into the challenges and solutions he’d already faced. The other panelist were really knowledgeable too, so this was a really good session.
vSphere 6.x Host Resource Deep Dive - #INF8430
Having heard Frank Denneman speak before, I don’t miss a chance to listen to him when one comes up. This guy is on another level when it comes to understanding and explaining things in a really simple way, from the inner workings of flash drives to his current series on NUMA. Frank covered a lot of NUMA design considerations and the implications of things like DIMMs placement. I’d not heard Niels Hagoort speak before, and it’s definitely a tough ask to share the stage with Frank, but he did a great job covering some advanced configuration for network cards and analysis on technologies like RSS and VXLAN offload. This was a really in depth and technical session, one of the best I’ve attended.
VMware {Code}
I spent some time at the VMware {Code} booth and got to hang out with Kimberley Delgado, Luc Dekens, William Lam and Alan Renouf - it was a proper who’s who of VMware automation.
Hall crawl and vendor chat
The Solutions Exchange is full of the usual suspects, touting their toys and competitions in exchange for your valuable contact details. It has to be my least favourite part of VMworld, but I do like to take a look around the outside of the hall at the smaller and startup vendors to see what they’re offering and what’s new.
I’ve met with the guys at Velostrata before at the London VMUG and I have to say that I was hugely impressed with their cloud mobility solution. It’s still in startup phase, I thought they were still in startup phase, but they’re now at v2.0 of the product. These guys are definitely one to watch out for, I have frequently said whoever cracks proper cloud mobility first is going to be big, and these guys have the best solution I’ve seen so far! Check them out at velostrata.com and request an evaluation.
It was great to catch up with the guys at Pluralsight, who I’ve mentioned quite a few times on my blog. I am lucky to have access to Pluralsight via the vExpert program - it’s one of the best perks because they have such an awesome and huge catalog of teaching. If you’re not familiar with them, go and take a look and sign up for a trial, if I didn’t have access already it’s something I’d genuinely pay for myself.